Video: A Look Back at Make Music New York
Last Friday our reporters joined locals and visitors to the nabe for Make Music New York, an annual city-wide festival that brought scores of musicians into parks and onto the sidewalks of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. Today, we have more photos and videos of some of the performers, and reflections on what we saw and heard.
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Sanpo Matsumoto used two samplers and a synthesizer to emit burbles, beats and hazy soundscapes onto the sidewalk outside Myrtle Avenue business Green in BKLYN. The artist, who was born in Japan and lives in Elmhurst, Queens, said that he loved playing in the open air.
“I hear this city sound and I improvise sound,” he said. “It’s a very beautiful experience.”
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A voice this good, for free? Thanks for the performance, Edwin Vazquez and Myrtle wine shop Gnarly Vines.
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You just gotta love this performance of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly with His Song” by the P.S. 20 band in Fort Greene Park.
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Griot Blues played outside the Fresh Fanatic grocery store on Washington Avenue and at Fort Greene Park. In this clip from the group’s first show, Sean B. adds lyrics to Lo Anderson’s strumming and singing. The group’s been playing together for five years, and Anderson, just 21, has already got the folk diva look down.
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Is it Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” or Chic’s “Good Times?” Dropping familiar rhythms outside Green in BKLYN, analog electronic duo The Statue of David showed they know their sources.
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Punctuating her words with clicking castanets and a tambourine, Helen “Esmeralda” Peterson shared her poetry and dancing with a few locals in front of the Walt Whitman Library on Saint Edwards Street.
Peterson, a Chelsea resident who was born into a theatrical family in Cuba, recited “Esperanza,” “Excavation” and “Dancing in Bull Rings.” She said that her inspiration comes from political issues, her relationship with her mother, and painful experiences.
She has been publishing her poetry since the 1970s, and won an award from Möbius, The Poetry Magazine in 2012. Peterson said that Make Music New York opened up a new direction for her art.
“This festival has really catapulted my inspiration into providing more of my poems with music,” she said.
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Country music singers have always been good at sharing what happens when we don’t take mama’s advice. Performing at Cuyler-Gore Park, Kelly Saint Patrick sounded like she has plenty of stories.
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With a series of gestures, Arijit Chakraborty led three members of the Brooklyn Soundpainting Ensemble in a skronky improvisation at JACK, an arts space on Waverly Avenue. Vocalist Joshua Joseph contributed spoken words, a ritualistic intonation and high-pitched calls to the piece. He said he likes how soundpainting, a sign language for live composition that American composer Walter Thompson began developing in the 1970s, permits “breaking all constraints.”
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Singer-songwriter Daryl Shawn finished his five-borough Make Music New York marathon in front of Green in BKLYN on Friday evening. The guitarist played almost 60 songs in his citywide tour, which began in the Bronx at 9 a.m. and continued to Manhattan, Staten Island and Queens.
It was the second year in a row Shawn played all five boroughs for Make Music New York.
“My fingers are definitely screaming at me, but I’m really ok,” he said. “It’s a fun way to get a feel for the city.”
On a classical six-string, Shawn played a mix of new and old songs as passersby stopped to listen. “I decided I didn’t want to repeat songs, and I’d do only my own songs,” he said. “I wanted to keep it interesting for me.”
A crowd chuckled at “Waiting in the Rain,” which Shawn said was inspired by long waits for the G train. He and his wife lived in Fort Greene for several years before moving to Sunset Park.
“By the looks of things, we could be here all night,” he sang.
As tree branches created patches of evening shade, about 40 people watched singers from American Opera Projects perform parts of “Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed that Line to Freedom,” by the east side of the Prison Ship Martys Monument plaza atop Fort Greene Park.
Sopranos Sequina DuBose and Sumayyah Ali, baritone Damian Norfleet, and tenor Clinton Ingraham sang and acted parts from Nkeiru Okoye’s powerful opera, which contrasts Tubman’s determination to escape slavery with her younger sister’s desire to stay in the South with her husband.
Philip Caggiano traveled from his home on the Upper West Side to hear the music.
“I was here early, and I sat under the tree, and the air was fresh,” he said. “I understand the trees reflect the sound, too.”
After she performed, Ali said that she enjoyed singing outdoors.
“It took away the formality of an opera house,” she said. “It allows you just to communicate with people.”
Playing a thick white hollow-body guitar, Mia Wilson, who records as The Bright Smoke, sang haunting, tense tales of unmet desire outside the bar Hanson Dry on Fulton Street.
“If you wanna be lonely, come with me,” Wilson sang.
Quincy Ledbetter, who produced The Bright Smoke’s recent album, “Late for War,” accompanied Wilson on his guitar, a brown and white Fender.
After two bleak songs, the pair played “Slow Down,” the last track on the album. It opened with brighter, more hopeful vocal and instrumental notes, evidence of a dawn, or a coming to terms with the landscape after loss.
At the end of the song, an audience member called loudly for one more.
“That’s the whole album!” Wilson said in response.
Emily Field, Amanda Woods and Jason Bisnoff contributed reporting.
We had a lot of fun at Make Music New York. We also wondered if there could have been more concerts in Fort Greene Park, and why hip-hop artists were absent from local sidewalks and stages. Locals, what did you think of this year’s festival? What would you have liked to hear? Email us your impressions, photos and videos.
